Sun, May 27, 2001

In the years ahead, more violent criminals may be walking the street, some taking the lives of law-abiding citizens, because someone in the White House couldn't keep his big mouth shut about how they were going to retaliate against Republican Senator Jim Jeffords for not voting the way the administration wanted him to.

Owen R. Smith shows me an envelope with clippings about that most infamous day. A photo shows his ship, the light cruiser Phoenix, as it moved through battleship row in Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.

Decoration Day, as it was called when Americans still
vividly remembered what it was they were supposed to be remembering, used
to be May 30, no matter what, never mind the pleasures, commercial and
recreational, of a three- day weekend.

The attempt this year to reprise last year's Million Mom March was a dud, attracting only about 200 demonstrators, and the Democrats' political gurus are whining about how Al Gore's pro-gun-control stance cost him votes last year in crucial states.

Even before the loss of majority status was fully realized by Republican senators after the defection of Sen. James Jeffords, they were pointing fingers at Republican Leader Trent Lott as being responsible for the calamity.

When Winston Churchill switched from the Tory Party to the Liberal Party in 1904, he said, "Some men change their party for the sake of their principles, others their principles for the sake of their party."

As the saying goes, in for a penny, in for a pound -- meaning, when you've knocked political correctness a few times and been knocked right back by those who esteem and practice it, you haven't much reputation left for High-Mindedness.

Mon, May 21, 2001

They've been called the men of "the greatest generation." In the usual course of human events, the men of the greatest generation should have been dancing, laughing, loving and playing. But they weren't.

Ted Olson is an old Washington hand, not known for naivete. Yet, he never expected that his nomination for solicitor general of the United States would be opposed by all nine Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

At about 7 a.m. one day in September 1999, at a home on a dead-end road in rural North Carolina, a 2-year-old girl put her jammies into the hamper and was about to get dressed when she remembered her new kitten.